Learning Generosity From Robert L. Payton, by Rusty Stahl

Over the course of the Days of Awe, different members of our community taught us about people in their lives who embody certain middot, or character traits. As part of our communal study of Musar, or character development, we are focusing on Generosity. These are the words that Rusty Stahl shared about his professor, Robert L. Peyton.                          --- Rabbi Brent Chaim Spodek

Robert L. Payton taught generosity. Literally. He was the first-ever emeritus professor of philanthropy, and he established what is now the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. Mr. Payton created a yearlong fellowship that
introduced recent college graduates to philanthropy, and I was fortunate to be accepted into the 8th cohort for my first year out of school. The fellowship’s weekly seminar, while formally a program of the university, took place in Mr. and Mrs.
Payton’s basement, which was a library with stacks of books, a seminar table, and a container of jelly beans.

Payton taught us…
 That philanthropy is voluntary action for the public good – including voluntary association, voluntary service, and voluntary giving.
 That our society relies not just on business, and not just government, but that a “third sector” – the nonprofit and philanthropic sector – is that space outside the market and the state where we organize ourselves into congregations, block associations and professional associations, advocacy campaigns, and a million other incarnations of civic life.
 That we can all “pay it forward: through what he called serial reciprocity.
 That everyone can be generous – from the most elite to the most marginalized among us.
 That generosity is generally a mix of self-interest and selflessness, that when I give of myself to others, I feel better about myself, that I may benefit more than the recipient, that I build my own “good life” through acts of generosity.
 That things are bad, and that we can make things better – that there is a continuum from the charity of responding to immediate human need to building institutions for long term change, and that both are needed.
 He pushed us to question what we were taught, to see that systems of explanation illuminate up to a point, and then falsify. Beyond what he taught, Mr. Payton and his wife, Polly, served as exemplars of generosity.
 He freely opened up his extraordinary network to us. For example, he sent six 24-year- olds on the road to Michigan and Chicago to sit down with the presidents of the MacArthur Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation. He didn’t even come with us – he trusted us.
 Far into retirement, he continued teaching the fellowship.
 They donated all those books to the university library to create the philanthropic studies collection, accessible to students and anyone else. More than all that, Mr. and Mrs. Payton had three sons, Joseph, Matthew, and David. Two of them - Joseph and Matthew - passed away as young men to disease and violence abroad while they were engaged in philanthropic activities.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the searing pain of that defining experience in their family, they opened their home and their lives to us. Six young adults every
year, for a dozen years. Likely this filled something missing for them, but it was also difficult for them. It was an act of serial reciprocity, of offering knowledge and traditions forward into an unknown future through people who had yet to prove ourselves. It was an act of generosity that continues to shape my life and the lives of many others.
Thanks for the opportunity to share it with you today.